How Iran’s Fake Opposition Is Deceiving the West and Silencing Freedom Fighters
Since coming to America, I have never stopped warning my fellow Americans about the danger of Iran’s Islamic Republic regime and its agenda to infiltrate and destroy our country’s values and principles. This evil Islamic enemy has infiltrated deep our society at the highest levels through exporting agents and fake opposition, which are trained by alleged Iranian “reformists.” Sadly, they have done far more damage than people know.
By way of background, despite growing up in Iran and under the heel of the Islamic regime that seized control of Iran this week in 1979, I understood that the regime was evil at its core, that misogyny was central to the regime maintaining control, and that the “Death to America and Death to Israel” chants that we were forced to repeat as children were the cornerstone of their lies.
After becoming a Christian, I was arrested and sentenced to death, spending nine months in Evin prison, spared only by public activism of Christians around the world and the grace of God. Unfortunately, I know more about the regime’s behavior and goals, stories which I share in my books. As much as I am committed to my faith, I am committed to my adopted county and its safety. It’s critical that we become aware of and defend ourselves from this insidious Islamic threat and cut off the head of the octopus of the Iranian regime.
Successive US governments and some of our politicians foolishly keep appeasing the ayatollahs and support the fake Iranian opposition for their own interests. Instead of making the Islamic regime accountable to the Iranian people who seek to overthrow the regime, they mistakenly empower the regime indirectly by allowing themselves to be deceived by Iranian agents. The goal of these agents is to mislead Western politicians, preventing the true voice of Iranian freedom fighters from being heard. They also try to offer Western politicians a fraudulent alternative after the fall of the regime, perpetuating power in Iran under evil leaders wearing different masks.
There are three groups of fake opposition: two, which work systematically outside Iran and one inside Iran. The first fake opposition outside Iran is those who supported, worked for, and cooperated with the regime since the beginning of the revolution in 1979. Some of them were trained and supported by alleged reformists and were exported outside Iran for different missions. The second fake opposition outside Iran is radical armed Islamic terrorists such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran, known as Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), and other ethnic groups that seek the division of Iran into small independent countries.
The third fake opposition is those who are trained by reformists inside the country and play the role of misleading both Iranians and Western people from inside prisons. We see this in the staged elections (I call selections) where a hardline Islamist always runs against a fake “reformist” who is hand-picked by the “Supreme Leader.”
Americans and other Westerners typically see the external fake opposition, propped up by politicians who are either too self-absorbed or ignorant or media thinking that anyone who says they oppose the Islamic regime can be trusted.
The fake opposition outside Iran is wolves in sheep’s clothes. They don’t look like ayatollahs with long beards, strange clothes, and forced Islamic hijabs for women. They wear Western clothes, and some of them speak English better than their mother tongue. Recognizing these people as fake opposition is complicated but critical. They are lobbyists, journalists, and political advisors. They appear and are celebrated throughout secular media.
But a simple investigation of these people reveals the truth through many videos, pictures, interviews, and documents from their past. These show they were not only strong supporters of the regime but also have been betraying Iranians for decades. However, shortly after emigrating, being set up as agents of the regime overseas, they started singing a different tune in their mission to mislead politicians and exert influence. Even if a few of them truly changed and turned their back on the regime, there is still evidence that shows they are not trustworthy.
Iranians who truly seek change and the overthrow of the Islamic regime have exposed their lies and tactics many times. But this is mostly in Farsi, leaving people like me to expose it to the West.
As with many things, another way to expose these people is by following the money trail. Income from jobs in Iran and America reveals further truth about these fake opposition puppets. One has to ask how they came to America and reached their positions of influence. Who in Western countries and America is supporting them and helping to amplify their voices? Through simply following public posts and documentation, it’s easy to see that most were former “reformists,” mostly supported by left-wing groups and leaders such as Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, Barack Obama, and other globalists.
One prominent example is Masoumeh (Masih) Alinejad. Her true name is Masoumeh, the name of one of the Islamic imam’s daughters, whose shrine is Qom, Iran’s Shiite holy city. The shortened version of Masoumeh is Masi, not Masih, which means nothing. Adding an (H) to Masi changes it to Masih (Christ in Farsi), which is the title of Jesus and is not an Iranian woman’s name. She may be a feminist, possibly an Islamic version of an atheist, but she is not a Christian as her new name would have one belief, and she does represent the Iranian opposition. Most Iranians do not know who she is, but for those who do, they ridicule her as anything other than a puppet of the regime, and use #Masihalinejad_blood_dealer to document this.
The second fake opposition group outside Iran includes groups such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran, known as Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK). They opposed the Shah of Iran, Mohamad Reza Pahlavi, and supported the Muslim extremist Ayatollah Khomeini, who seized power and control of Iran in 1979, 46 years ago this week. MEK supported Khomeini’s massive purge and through killing of Iranians as they consolidated control through fear, intimidation, and mandating their strict version of Islamic extremism. Because of disagreement over sharing power, something Islamist tyrants are not known for, MEK leaders were forced to flee Iran and created an armed opposition army against the Islamic regime. They share part of the same radical Islamic ideology as the regime but mix their Islamic extremism with Marxism.
In the 1980s, during the bloody Iran-Iraq war, MEK joined Sadam Hussein in killing innocent Iranian civilians, a legitimate means to an end of unseating Khomeini and his extremists, having lost their control and influence. Iranians know that MEK is only out for its interests, not for the well-being of the Iranian people, with the blood of tens of thousands of Iranians on their hands. MEK also has the blood of Americans on their hands through the assassination of US military personnel and contractors throughout the 1970s. In 1997, the US State Department designated MEK as a terrorist organization. The European Union also put MEK on its terrorist list in 2002. Despite countless horrible videos and documentation about their crimes, the EU and the US removed the MEK from their list of terrorist organizations in 2009 and 2012, respectively. Iranians know the truth and share this widely using #MEKterrorists.
Iranians hate these groups because of their treason. They have no public support inside Iran. In prison, I met and grew to know several MEK followers. While I met many in prison who I respected and became friends with, some who actually supported Iran becoming a country of its citizens in opposition to the Islamists, and many victims of the regime, it’s clear that the strict Islamic ideology and support for terrorist’s leaders of the MEK make it dangerous to Iran. When Iranians say they prefer the ayatollahs to the MEK, it does not mean the ayatollahs are better, but they just want to show the level of their contempt for the MEK.
Unfortunately, it pains me that support for Iranian terrorists is not limited to Democrats. American leaders such as former Vice President Mike Pence, CIA director and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Ambassador John Bolton, and other American and European politicians shamefully support MEK. Iranians revealed that Pence and Pompeo have received hundreds of thousands of dollars just for speaking at MEK events. Recently, Trump’s Ukraine envoy Kellogg also attended an event in Paris, hosted by MEK to show his support to this terrorist group and its leader, Maryam Rajavi. These are people who should know better, and if they don’t, they are also guilty of supporting terrorists.
Iranians are distrustful of the external fake opposition and sick and tired of treasonous acts that they represent and support. Iranians know they represent and try to influence policies in the countries in which they develop influence, policies that are not only wrong, but which will perpetuate suffering of Iranians under the heels of extremist Islamists. What’s needed is politicians and policies that represent and facilitate the vision of liberating Iran from these evil influences and can be the cornerstone for a free and democratic Iran and an end to it being the biggest supporter of terror in the world.
Photo Courtesy: ©Getty Images/Sir Francis Canker Photography
Published Date: February 6, 2025
Marzi also is the founder and president of NEW PERSIA whose mission is to be the voice of persecuted Christians and oppressed women under Islam, expose the lies of the Iranian Islamic regime, and restore the relationships between Persians, Jews, and Christians. www.NewPersia.org
Originally published February 06, 2025.
